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First things First

I invited mom and Gerry up to Kelowna this past weekend, as I wanted them to see the yard all clean and tidy. It hasn’t looked like this since we bought the place 21 years ago. However, there’s a new sheriff in town, and she’s a tidy, old, cranky sheriff, so the place is going to be clean from now on.

As you’ll recall, I had the Biggest Garbage Removal Bill of all time a few weeks ago as I had three trucks full of detritus hauled away. Then, I had a lovely arbour installed in the gap in the cedar hedge, leading down to my vegetable garden complete with bee hive.

So the final touch was to rake, sweep and generally tidy every bit of the paved area, and now it’s absolutely lovely. Of course my right hand was swollen to the size of a bear’s claw by the time all of this was achieved, but I have to say, the place really does look great. And on top of it all, there’s nary a car up on blocks in sight!

When mom and Gerry arrived just before noon on Saturday I handed them a nice cold Margarita. Then for lunch I made salmon in a cream sauce served in freshly baked vol au vent shells with salad on the side. For dessert I made meringue shells, and filled them with strawberry compote made from local strawberries, and topped with whipped cream.

Then the next day I decided to weigh myself, just on one of those whims, and realized that eating whipped cream isn’t a good idea. It was a whim based on having recently put on a dress I’d worn last summer and thinking that it had shrunk terribly over the winter. However the problem wasn’t actually shrinkage, but expansion on my part as the scale happily showed.

As you know, I’m fanatical about gym attendance, and go five times a week. I also go up and down and up and down to the lower vegetable garden dozens of times a day. A normal person would’ve installed automatic drip sprinklers there, but I guess my subconscious wanted me to sweat hard.

And in spite of all that physical exercise, if I have one or two lapses in judgment, wham! two or three pounds get added to my cellulite-filled midriff. Life can be so cruel. And then I have to suffer the indignity of looking at the photos of the beautiful Duchess of Cambridge and her sylph-like, pencil-thin silhouette.

Like my apartment when I attended university, I have the whole place clean and tidy. When I went to UBC in Vancouver, and whenever I’d have a paper due or a test for which to study, I’d procrastinate by cleaning. Nothing much has changed, as I now look at the fruitcake ingredients, and think, now I’m finally ready.

But wait! First I had to try on everything in my closet, just to see if there are things I can give away. I now need two full closets to hold everything, so it’s good to pare down whenever possible. Several hours later I felt happy to have a small pile for the Salvation Army. By then it was much too late to start on fruitcake prep, so shrugged and thought, ‘manana.’